Netnotic SEO Marketing Blog

The Junior Southern Rodeo Association, from North Carolina, has just gone live with the Rodeo Management System from Netnotic Marketing. This is our fourth junior or high school rodeo association and having some previous experience with the past associations has made the implementation of this project smoother and easier.

Junior associations have most of the same requirements a senior or a professional rodeo association, with some additional reporting requirements as they often have a series of divisions. JSRA has 5 divisions, from youngest to oldest, Pee Wee, Junior, and Senior, with Junior and Senior each being divided into Boys and Girls. This makes for additional season standings and all-around reporting requirements but once these reports are built, they automatically update.

Rodeo Management System is now in use essentially from North to South and East to West in North America with users in many provinces in Canada, south to Texas, our new client in North Carolina, and West to California.

Voice Search is Trending Up

As we as consumers seek more and more convenience and instant response, often we opt to rely on the more convenient source of information available as the authority source. When using voice enabled devices such as mobile phones and internet enabled virtual devices, we interact as if we are having a conversation with a real person. The conversation is like a Q&A interview and most often the answers are a single result, the result the device (the search algorithm behind the device) determines as the single best response. The conversation is the key distinction in how these devices are changing the way in which marketers need to think to about their website content and how to capitalize on the rise of devices that act like mobile.

Implications for Digital Marketers

If the method of search is different, meaning the search query is different, this in turn means there is an opportunity for digital marketers to offer up content that is more appealing to the search. As mentioned above, the interaction with the device is more conversational and the request for information is typically a question, as compared to the common keyboard search phrase of several words. This suggests that matching content will be best suited as an answer to that question, with the question contained in the answer. As a digital marketer, the challenge will be to identify the questions that your website should be positioned to answer. Hint: Some of these questions are already found in your Google Analytics data.

A New Search Scenario

Imagine it’s the weekend and a group of adventurous friends are gathered at one friends house, reliving past adventures, and planning for their next. Dave calls out, “Hey Google, what is the top rated outdoor adventure company in Saskatchewan?’ Google answers, “ABC Outfitters has a Google rating of 4.9 and is located in Anywhere, Saskatchewan.” Dave replies, “Hey Google, call ABC Outfitters.”

Here are a few important points about this scenario. First, it’s already happening. Second, the search query, the question, was answered with a single response. There were no alternatives. Third, the action lead directly to a contact with the outfitter. Lastly, the searcher never actually touched or viewed the website.

Beyond Mobile Friendly

For digital marketers, we need to start to think beyond just mobile friendly website design (responsive websites) to also consider mobile friendly and voice search friendly content. A mobile friendly website is a must, otherwise you are losing positions in the Google mobile index, which is now searched more often than desktop. But this is now just step one.

Using the free combination of Google Search Console and Google Analytics, we can dig into the history of searches that brought visitors to our website and determine which are more qualified and use this to optimize for more search traffic of this type. That means an investment in time, and investment in data, an investment in analytics.

The Grand Canyon Professional Rodeo Association has become the latest rodeo association to choose our rodeo Management System. Along with this association came the requirements for incentive format events which lead to some custom programming, which has now become a standard option with the RMS.

It seems that this past Christmas season the commercials on TV were one of three types, Mobile Phone commercials, car commercials, or the new internet enabled home virtual assistant devices such as:

Google Home

Facebook Portal

Amazon Echo (Alexa)

and a variety of other emerging devices

These devices, commonly situated on a table, shelf or counter top, act more like a mobile device than a non-mobile desktop computer. They are used because they are instantly accessible and can perform functions with a minimum of effort. Unlike a desktop computer, which they may be positioned directly beside, they do not offer the variety of input methods such as keyboards and mouse clicks. So input, and output, are somewhat restricted.

Alexa used to access internet via voice search

Google Home Voice Search

Mobile phones were also pushing their many capabilities adding to the ways you can access the Internet and interact with your devices, besides touching the keyboard. This ads both Siri and Cortana to the list of personal assistants that are changing how voice search and voice commands are a rising trend (see Siri Told Me to Call You). If you are wondering what Cortana is, it’s search box in the lower left corner of your Windows computer that can be accessed by typing in the box or speaking via your computer’s microphone. It can be used for everything from putting your computer into sleep mode to requesting an internet search.

Now consider the primary method in which users interact with all these devices, it is your voice, and for most of these devices, interaction is 100% voice, no screen, no keyboard. So while many of these voice activated virtual assistants offer home automation features such as turning your lights on an off, changing the settings on your thermostat, they are more commonly being used to obtain Internet search results. A quick query like “Hey Alexa, what will be the weather this afternoon? seems simple enough but it can go well beyond simple and basic information.

As we as consumers seek more and more convenience and instant response, often we opt to rely on the more convenient source of information available as the authority source. When using these internet enabled virtual devices, we interact as if they were a mobile device we are having a conversation with. The conversation is like a Q&A interview and most often the answers are a single result, the result the device (the search algorithm behind the device) determines as the single best response. The conversation is the key distinction in how these devices are changing the way in which marketers need to think to about their website content and how to capitalize on the rise of devices that act like mobile.

I had a recent event that was quite interesting, and an event that I had somewhat predicted just a week prior. Several weeks ago I was speaking to an industry group on the topic of Websites and Digital Marketing. During my presentation I highlighted the rise of voice search and how it might be a trend worth considering. Voice search on mobile phones and tablets, voice search on computers, and voice search on the new internet enabled virtual assistant devices (more on these in a later article). The image I used in the presentation is shown above.

A couple quick stats I shared in my presentation is that web search activity on mobile devices is now greater than 50% of all web search activity (since 2016).

The younger demographic of 18 to 34 uses their phone as their primary device

55% of Millennials use voice search at least once a day

In the 35 to 50 demographic, 49% search the web on their phone at least occasionally

The main point I was making on the topic is that search activity is changing, the devices are changing and the way that people respond to search results is changing. In my example, I described how I am seeing more people contacting Netnotic Marketing from their phones ( and other non-desktop devices) as ever before but also that the search strings resulting in traffic to my site is changing. The example I used talked about a recent customer who called me because “Siri told me to call you”. This new customer was looking to improve the Search Engine Optimization for their website in Saskatoon so they queued up Siri on their mobile phone and asked for “Saskatoon SEO”. Siri returned a list of results, of which my website was the top results, so the customer called me. In the following conversation, I asked the customer what brought them to Netnotic and their response was, “because Siri told me to call you”. I always ask customers (and new leads) what lead them to contact us and we are definitely noticing a upswing in the interaction with new search devices.

So the key point for digital marketing here, in my case for Saskatoon SEO, is that we need to be very aware of how devices lead to new behavior, and new behavior may be changing how we optimize our websites to capitalize on these new trends. We will be talking about both the rise of new devices that act like mobile (sort of) as well as the rise of voice search in a couple of coming articles.

California High School Rodeo Association, District 1 has chosen to use the Rodeo Management System to manage their rodeo entries, member database, rodeo draw generation, accept online entry fee payments, and more.

After talking with the representatives from their affiliated District 3, who are using RMS, they made the decision to go with RMS as well for the 2018/2019 rodeo season.

Both CHSRA D1 AND CHSRA D3 follow the same rodeo formats and rules, as set by the California High School Rodeo Association so implementation was swift to bring them on board. Having both districts in the system will also allow for some interoperability in the near future when D1 hosts a large rodeo which also allows entrants from outside the district to compete and we can enable D3 members to enter the rodeo without having to create a new member profile within the D1 member database.

We have deployed combination of SEO and SEM projects for Wilderness Family Outfitters as a successful example of bringing quality paid advertising with Google Ads traffic to a client and then working to add organic traffic over a longer period of time for a dual source of traffic, leads, bookings and revenue.

The Texas Youth Ranch Rodeo Association began their use of the Rodeo Management System today. This is the second association using RMS in Texas to come on board this year. The rodeo format TYRRA uses is significantly different than a typical rodeo as all events are team-based and teams enter all events. Because of this unique format, we developed some custom registration and rodeo entry functions to accommodate. As well, we added another layer of team/team member database management to allow for the management of both teams as well as individuals within their organization.

We completed, and tested, all the customization work well in advance of their rodeo season which begins in May. As usual, the customization work was done at no charge as we are confident that the tool, functions, reports and more that we developed will be useful to other rodeo associations in the future.

The Chinook Rodeo Association has selected the Rodeo Management System to manage their rodeo entries, draw management, results, standings, and more.

As usually happens, the CRA had a few additions requested to help manage their rodeo needs according to their association rules and practices. Some of these include special draw order assignment based on preferences and performances, some custom column display formats on the Judges Sheets, custom payout rules for the Lil Rascals event, and rodeo balance sheets.

As usual, when we were asked if “RMS could do that?” the answer was a confident, “Not yet”. So far we have been able to accommodate all the special requests of our users and improve the feature list of our system.